No-arbitrage conditions for storable commodities and the modeling of futures term structures

One distinguishable feature of storable commodities is that they relate to two markets: cash market and storage market. This paper proves that, if no arbitrage exists in the storage-cash dual markets, the commodity convenience yield has to be non-negative. However, classical reduced-form models for futures term structures could allow serious arbitrages due to the high volatility of the convenience yield. To avoid negative convenience yield, this paper proposes a semi-affine arbitrage-free model, which prices futures analytically and fits futures term structures reasonably well. Importantly, our model prices commodity-related contingent claims (such as calendar spread options) quite differently with classical models.     

Estimating exponential affine models with correlated measurement errors: Applications to fixed income and commodities

Exponential affine models (EAMs) are factor models popular in financial asset pricing requiring a dynamic term structure, such as for interest rates and commodity futures. When implementing EAMs it is usual to first specify the model in state-space form (SSF) and then to estimate it using the Kalman filter. To specify the SSF, a structure of the measurement error must be provided which is not specified in the EAM itself. Different specifications of the measurement errors will result in different SSFs, leading to different parameter estimates. In this paper we investigate the influence of the measurement error specification on the parameter estimates. Using market data for both fixed income and commodities we provide evidence that measurement errors are cross-sectionally and serially correlated, which is not consistent with the independent identically distributed (iid) assumptions commonly adopted in the literature. Using simulated data we show that measurement error assumptions affect parameter estimates, especially in the presence of serial correlation. We provide a new specification, the augmented state-space form (ASSF), as a solution to these biases and show that the ASSF gives much better estimates than the basic SSF.     

Liquidity risk and stock returns around the world

The recent global financial crisis demonstrates that market liquidity is a prominent systematic risk globally. We find that local liquidity risk, in addition to the local market, value and size factors, demands a systematic premium across stocks in 11 developed markets. This local pricing premium is smaller in countries where the country-level corporate boards are more effective and where there are less insider trading activities. We also discover that global liquidity risk is a significant pricing factor across all developed country market portfolios after controlling for global market, value, and size factors. The contribution of this risk to the return on a country market portfolio is economically and statistically significant within and across regions.     

Liquidity risk of corporate bond returns: conditional approach

We study the exposure of the US corporate bond returns to liquidity shocks of stocks and Treasury bonds over the period 1973–2007 in a regime-switching model. In one regime, liquidity shocks have mostly insignificant effects on bond prices, whereas in another regime, a rise in illiquidity produces significant but conflicting effects: Prices of investment-grade bonds rise while prices of speculative-grade (junk) bonds fall substantially (relative to the market). Relating the probability of these regimes to macroeconomic conditions we find that the second regime can be predicted by economic conditions that are characterized as “stress.” These effects, which are robust to controlling for other systematic risks (term and default), suggest the existence of time-varying liquidity risk of corporate bond returns conditional on episodes of flight to liquidity. Our model can predict the out-of-sample bond returns for the stress years 2008–2009. We find a similar pattern for stocks classified by high or low book-to-market ratio, where again, liquidity shocks play a special role in periods characterized by adverse economic conditions.     

Pinning in the S&P 500 futures

We show that Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500 futures are pulled toward the at-the-money strike price on days when serial options on the S&P 500 futures expire (pinning) and are pushed away from the cost-of-carry adjusted at-the-money strike price right before the expiration of options on the S&P 500 index (anti-cross-pinning). These effects are driven by the interplay of market makers' rebalancing of delta hedges due to the time decay of those hedges as well as in response to reselling (and early exercise) of in-the-money options by individual investors. The associated shift in notional futures value is at least $115 million per expiration day.     

Expected returns, risk premia, and volatility surfaces implicit in option market prices

This article presents a pure exchange economy that extends Rubinstein (1976) to show how the jump-diffusion option pricing model of Merton (1976) is altered when jumps are correlated with diffusive risks. A non-zero correlation between jumps and diffusive risks is necessary in order to resolve the positively sloped implied volatility term structure inherent in traditional jump diffusion models. Our evidence is consistent with a negative covariance, producing a non-monotonic term structure. For the proposed market structure, we present a closed form asset pricing model that depends on the factors of the traditional jump-diffusion models, and on both the covariance of the diffusive pricing kernel with price jumps and the covariance of the jumps of the pricing kernel with the diffusive price. We present statistical evidence that these covariances are positive. For our model the expected stock return, jump and diffusive risk premiums are non-linear functions of time.     

Understanding commonality in liquidity around the world

We examine how commonality in liquidity varies across countries and over time in ways related to supply determinants (funding liquidity of financial intermediaries) and demand determinants (correlated trading behavior of international and institutional investors, incentives to trade individual securities, and investor sentiment) of liquidity. Commonality in liquidity is greater in countries with and during times of high market volatility (especially, large market declines), greater presence of international investors, and more correlated trading activity. Our evidence is more reliably consistent with demand-side explanations and challenges the ability of the funding liquidity hypothesis to help us understand important aspects of financial market liquidity around the world, even during the recent financial crisis.     

Corporate taxes,strategic default,and the cost of debt

The current US tax code’s loss carry provisions provide implicit tax subsidies to financially troubled firms. Since shareholders ultimately decide when to announce bankruptcy, such tax subsidies can incentivize them to strategically postpone default. Therefore, corporate taxation can influence corporate cost of debt. Using a large panel of corporate bonds, we find supporting evidence: credit spreads become smaller as tax loss carries grow larger. In contrast, tax shields such as depreciation, which limit loss carry gains, lead to wider spreads. Interestingly, when stockholders hold greater bargaining power – due to large managerial ownership – larger corporate tax shields lead to even narrower credit spreads.     

HEDGE FUND SURVIVAL: NON-NORMAL RETURNS, CAPITAL OUTFLOWS, AND LIQUIDITY

We analyze the factors that influence the survival probability of hedge funds reported in the Lipper TASS database. Particular emphasis is placed on (1) non-normality of returns and assets under management (AUM), (2) short-term capital outflows, and (3) liquidity constraints associated with a hedge fund's cancellation policy. Estimation results using the Cox proportional hazards model and the panel logit model show that (1) funds with lower skewness in returns and AUM, (2) funds experiencing instantaneous rapid capital outflows, and (3) funds with a shorter redemption notice period and a higher redemption frequency have significantly higher liquidation probabilities, among others.     

Sarbanes-Oxley Act and corporate credit spreads

Stock market reaction suggests that despite improved disclosure and increased accountability, Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) is too costly and not beneficial. Noting that bondholders are likely to reap the many potential benefits of SOX without bearing the brunt of costs, we examine how SOX affected corporate credit spreads to better assess its benefits. SOX has led to a significant structural decline in spreads of at least 27 basis points. Riskier firms (low rating, long maturity, high leverage, and small size) and firms closely related to SOX major provisions (earning variability, managerial trading, and corporate governance) experience greater declines in spreads.     

Two counters of jumps

This paper introduces a class of two counters of jumps option pricing models. The stock price follows a jump-diffusion process with price jumps up and price jumps down, where each type of jumps can have different means and standard deviations. Price jumps can be negatively autocorrelated as it has been observed in practice. We investigate the volatility surfaces generated by this class of two counters of jumps option pricing models. Our formulae, like the jump-diffusion models with a single counter of jumps, are able to generate smiles, and skews   with similar shapes to those observed in the options markets. More importantly, unlike the jump-diffusion models with a single counter of jumps, our formulae are able to generate term structures of implied volatilities of at-the-money options with ∩$\cap$-shaped patterns similar to those observed in the marketplace.     

News-driven return reversals: Liquidity provision ahead of earnings announcements

This study documents a six-fold increase in short-term return reversals during earnings announcements relative to non-announcement periods. Following prior research, we use reversals as a proxy for expected returns market makers demand for providing liquidity. Our findings highlight significant time-series variation in the magnitude of short-term return reversals and suggest that market makers demand higher expected returns prior to earnings announcements because of increased inventory risks that stem from holding net positions through the release of anticipated earnings news. Collectively, our findings suggest that uncertainty regarding anticipated information events elicits predictable increases in the compensation demanded for providing liquidity and that these increases significantly affect the dynamics and information content of market prices.     

Liquidity skewness

Bid–ask spreads in equities have declined on average but have become increasingly right-skewed. This finding holds across exchanges as well as size, price, and volume quartiles. Higher right-skewness is consistent with more competition among market makers; which may reduce cross-subsidization across periods of high and low asymmetric information, unlike a monopolistic regime that can maintain a relatively constant spread. Confirming this intuition, proportional differences in spreads between earnings announcements and normal periods have increased considerably even as trading costs have declined on average. Skewness also is cross-sectionally related to information proxies such as institutional holdings and analyst following.     

DYNAMIC HEDGE FUND STYLE ANALYSIS WITH ERRORS‐IN‐VARIABLES

We revisit the traditional return‐based style analysis in the presence of time‐varying exposures and errors‐in‐variables (EIV). We apply a benchmark selection algorithm using the Kalman filter and compute the estimated EIV of the selected benchmarks. We adjust them by subtracting their EIV from the initial return series to obtain an estimate of the true uncontaminated benchmarks. Finally, we run the Kalman filter on these adjusted regressors. Analyzing EDHEC alternative index styles, we show that this technique improves the factor loadings and allows more precise identification of the return sources of the considered hedge fund strategy.     

The divergence of liquidity commonality in the cross-section of stocks

This paper demonstrates that the cross-sectional variation of liquidity commonality has increased over the period 1963–2005. The divergence of systematic liquidity can be explained by patterns in institutional ownership over the sample period. We document that our findings are associated with similar patterns in systematic risk. Our analysis also indicates that the ability to diversify systematic risk and aggregate liquidity shocks by holding large-cap stocks has declined. The evidence suggests that the fragility of the US equity market to unanticipated events has increased over the past few decades.     

ETF Premiums and Liquidity Segmentation

Exchange traded funds (ETFs) provide a means for investors to access assets indirectly that may be accessible at a high cost otherwise. I show that liquidity segmentation can explain the tendency for ETFs to trade at a premium to net asset value (NAV) as well as the life‐cycle pattern in premiums. ETFs with larger NAV tracking error standard deviations (TESDs) tend to trade at higher premiums and the liquidity benefits offered by foreign ETFs and fixed income ETFs are revealed to be the most valuable to investors. Further tests validate that TESD has the desirable properties of a liquidity segmentation measure.     

Liquidity and market efficiency

Short-horizon return predictability from order flows is an inverse indicator of market efficiency. We find that such predictability is diminished when bid-ask spreads are narrower, and has declined over time with the minimum tick size. Variance ratio tests suggest that prices were closer to random walk benchmarks in the more liquid decimal regime than in other ones. These findings indicate that liquidity stimulates arbitrage activity, which, in turn, enhances market efficiency. Further, as the tick size decreased, open-close/close-open return variance ratios increased, while return autocorrelations decreased. This suggests an increased incorporation of private information into prices during more liquid regimes.     

Liquidity and valuation in an uncertain world

During the 2007–2009 financial crisis there was little or no trading in a variety of financial assets, even though bid and ask prices existed for many of these assets. We develop a model in which this illiquidity arises from uncertainty, and we argue that this new form of illiquidity makes bid and ask prices unsuitable as metrics for establishing “fair value” for these assets. We show how the extreme uncertainty that traders face can be characterized by incomplete preferences over portfolios, and we use Bewley's (2002) model of decision making under uncertainty to derive equilibrium quotes and the nonexistence of trading at these quotes. We then suggest alternatives for valuing assets in illiquid markets.     

A Markov regime switching approach for hedging energy commodities

This paper estimates constant and dynamic hedge ratios in the New York Mercantile Exchange oil futures markets and examines their hedging performance. We also introduce a Markov regime switching vector error correction model with GARCH error structure. This specification links the concept of disequilibrium with that of uncertainty (as measured by the conditional second moments) across high and low volatility regimes. Overall, in and out-of-sample tests indicate that state dependent hedge ratios are able to provide significant reduction in portfolio risk.